Low-Level Apple Employee Is Behind iOS iBoot Source Code Leak, Reports Say
One of the biggest source code leaks happened to Apple last Wednesday, Feb. 7, as the code for iBoot, a component of iOS integral to its security, got posted on Github. New reports suggest that the culprit could be a low-level employee involved in the iPhone jailbreaking scene.
Last week, a user named "ZioShiba" posted on GitHub, one of the most popular open source code publishing sites online, what turned out to be the code for Apple's closed source iBoot software. iBoot is a vital component of the iOS that ensures that a trusted, untampered copy of iOS is being loaded up at boot, according to Motherboard.
Apple, which has always prided itself on the security of its source code and the secrecy of their new updates, have been thoroughly embarrassed by the incident. The company immediately issued a DMCA takedown notice against the GitHub post, all but confirming that the upload was genuine proprietary Apple code, as Gizmodo pointed out.
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It could be considered the "biggest leak" since the iPhone first launched, according to Jonathan Levin, an iPhone researcher. Apparently, the code was taken by a low-level Apple employee who is also connected to the iPhone jailbreaking community, and the leak happened as early as 2016, according to two persons involved with receiving the code.
The Apple employee who copied the iBoot source code also took additional code and shared a part of the stolen code with a group of five people.
"He pulled everything, all sorts of Apple internal tools and whatnot," a source said.
Somehow, the code was eventually shared by someone in the small circle of five people. After that, the iBoot source code spread out uncontrolled. "I was really paranoid about it getting leaked immediately by one of us," one of the original people to receive the code told Motherboard's Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai.
"Having the iBoot source code and not being inside Apple...that's unheard of," the source added.
